The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (19 page)

As a baseball player, Schilling refused to ever consider the notion of defeat until the final out, even down three games to none to the Yankees. By his own admission, he carried that same attitude into business. One former employee describes it as “rampant and destructive optimism.”

Asked if that's truly what undid him, Schilling says, “No,” then stutters and pauses. “I don't know any other way to be,” he says finally, his voice dropping to just above a whisper and his eyes welling up. “I don't know any other way to be.”

BILL GIFFORD

FROM OUTSIDE

 

I
T'S A JOURNALISTIC AXIOM
that when your phone rings early on a Monday, from a blocked number, it's generally not because somebody loves your work. I picked up to hear an angry Lance Armstrong on the line, along with Doug Ulman, the CEO of the Lance Armstrong Foundation—aka Livestrong. It was 8:00
A.M
. in Austin. They were calling to berate me about what they considered my bias against Livestrong and Lance.

Which seemed strange, since I wasn't working on a Livestrong article. Not yet, anyway. Granted, I'd been sniffing around and had posted a tweet or two, but nothing more. One of those posts was written on April 17, 2011, the day
60 Minutes
aired its report on Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute. According to allegations made by Steve Kroft and Jon Krakauer, Mortenson had used foundation money to fly himself around and promote his books, which were full of lies about his adventures in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the charges went, the organization wasn't operating nearly as many schools as Mortenson liked to claim.

“
60 Minutes
takedown,” I tweeted, “just goes to show that ‘awareness' is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Admittedly, I had both Mortenson and Armstrong in mind when I wrote this: both were facing legal investigations, and both would end up using their philanthropic work as part of their PR defense. The “awareness” wording was a jab at Livestrong, since raising cancer awareness is a major part of the organization's mission.

A lame joke, perhaps, but that's all it was. Still, it made Armstrong livid. “You need to come down here and see what we do,” he said sternly. “Ask us the hard questions.” It was more a command than a request. “I know you're a hater and you're gonna write what you write, but I just want you to see it.”

At the time, Armstrong was starting to take some serious flak of his own. The Jeff Novitzky–led federal investigation into his past was dragging former teammates and associates in front of a Los Angeles grand jury. In January,
Sports Illustrated
published an exposé that supported Floyd Landis's claims that Armstrong had doped to win his seven Tour de France titles. Now
60 Minutes
was said to be working on its own, more damaging story.

In the wake of the Mortenson report, bloggers and journalists (not just this one) were asking pointed questions about Livestrong, the disease-fighting charity that Armstrong founded in 1997, during his recovery from testicular cancer. Cynics wondered whether Armstrong was another Mortenson, living large on his foundation's dime. After all, Armstrong had recently spent $11 million on a personal jet. Was he really rich enough to pay for that out of his own pocket?

“The issue with Lance Armstrong isn't whether he has done good for cancer victims,” accounting professor Mark Zimbelman wrote on his blog Fraudbytes, in a post comparing Mortenson to Armstrong, “but rather, whether he first cheated to beat his opponents, then used his fraudulent titles to help promote an organization that appears to do good but also enriches a fraudster.”

Others noticed an annoying tendency: whenever questions about doping arose, Armstrong and his supporters changed the subject to his cancer work, a tactic that the bicycling website NY Velocity called “raising the cancer shield.” After the
60 Minutes
segment on Armstrong aired in May—complete with damning claims from ex-teammate Tyler Hamilton that Armstrong had cheated—Armstrong's lawyers denied the allegations and quickly invoked Livestrong in his defense. In their one legal brief to date, they blasted the feds over alleged leaks to
60 Minutes
that, they said, were intended to legitimize “the government's investigation of a national hero, best known for his role in the fight against cancer.”

But what did that fight amount to? Did Livestrong actually do much to eradicate cancer, or did it exist largely to promote Lance? If and when any indictments came down, would his good deeds help him escape conviction or jail time? It seemed likely that this theme could come up. Barry Bonds's lawyers recently asked for probation instead of prison time as punishment for the baseball star's 2011 Balco conviction, citing his “significant history of charitable, civic, and prior good works.”

Writers who've dealt with Lance and his associates are familiar with their aggro style, but it seemed strange that they'd come on so strong that morning. Still, Lance had a point: if I wanted to write about Livestrong, I needed to go see things for myself.

 

For various reasons, I'm not Lance Armstrong's favorite journalist. In 2006, I profiled Michele Ferrari, his longtime Italian trainer, for
Bicycling
. Researching that story left me with serious doubts about whether Armstrong had competed clean, as he continues to insist. In 2009, I wrote a
Slate
story called “JerkStrong” that likened his media-relations style to Sarah Palin's. But my skepticism about Armstrong as an athlete did not extend to the cancer arena. More than once, I have given his book
It's Not About the Bike
to friends stricken with the disease. Not all of them survived, but I know that none of them cared whether he doped to win the Tour.

Make no mistake, though: if Armstrong is indicted, the survival of Livestrong will hang in the balance. It seems obvious that Novitzky, an aggressive former IRS agent, would be keenly interested in the organization and how it operates. If so, he's not alone. At least two other major publications have done serious reporting on Livestrong—that is, they started to. In both cases, Livestrong lawyers succeeded in shutting down the stories before they were published. They applied the same pressures to
Outside
, blitzing my editors with pissed-off emails, phone calls, and, eventually, a five-page letter from general counsel Mona Patel complaining about “Mr. Gifford's conduct, professionalism, and method of reporting.” One of my crimes was a failed attempt to get a source to talk off the record, an ordinary journalistic practice.

All of which now makes me wonder if I missed something. During an investigation that played out over several months—involving dozens of interviews and careful examination of Livestrong's public financial records—I found no evidence that Armstrong has done anything illegal in his role as the face of the organization. As far as I can tell, he paid for the private jet himself—which is now for sale, by the way, along with his ranch outside Austin—and he's apparently been scrupulous about his expenditures as they relate to the nonprofit. When Armstrong travels on Livestrong business, the foundation insists, he picks up his own tabs.

“Since day one, Lance has never been reimbursed for an expense,” says Greg Lee, Livestrong's CFO. “Period.” Armstrong told me that Livestrong's board—which includes venture capitalist Jeff Garvey, CNN medical reporter Sanjay Gupta, and Harlem cancer fighter Harold Freeman—“would resign immediately if any of that shit happened.”

The financial records appear to back up Armstrong's assertion, and if there's a more nefarious reality behind the curtain, it may take someone with subpoena power to bring it to light. In addition to Novitzky's investigation, the IRS examined the foundation's 2006 returns, although Livestrong officials say it was a routine review.

On the program side, I learned that Livestrong provides an innovative and expanding suite of direct services to help cancer survivors negotiate our Kafkaesque health care system. Beyond that, though, I found a curiously fuzzy mix of cancer-war goals like “survivorship” and “global awareness,” labels that seem to entail plastering the yellow Livestrong logo on everything from T-shirts to medical conferences to soccer stadiums. Much of the foundation's work ends up buffing the image of one Lance Edward Armstrong, which seems fair—after all, Livestrong wouldn't exist without him. But Livestrong spends massively on advertising, PR, and “branding,” all of which helps preserve Armstrong's marketability at a time when he's under fire. Meanwhile, Armstrong has used the goodwill of his foundation to cut business deals that have enriched him personally, an ethically questionable move.

“It's a win-win,” says Daniel Borochoff, head of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a watchdog group. “He builds up the foundation, and they build up him.”

Equally interesting is what the foundation doesn't do. Most people—including nearly everybody I surveyed while reporting this story—assume that Livestrong funnels large amounts of money into cancer research. Nope. The foundation gave out a total of $20 million in research grants between 1998 and 2005, the year it began phasing out its support of hard science. A note on the foundation's website informs visitors that, as of 2010, it no longer even accepts research proposals.

Nevertheless, the notion persists that Livestrong's main purpose is to help pay for lab research into cancer cures. In an online “
60 Minutes
Overtime” interview after the May broadcast, CBS anchor Scott Pelley said Armstrong's alleged misdeeds were mitigated because “he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research.”

Pelley isn't alone in getting that wrong: a search of the
New York Times
turns up dozens of hits for “Armstrong” and “cancer research.” An Associated Press story from August 2010 described Livestrong as “one of the top 10 groups funding cancer research in the United States.” The comments section of any article about Armstrong will inevitably include messages like this one from
ESPN.com
: “keep raising millions for cancer research lance, and ignore the haters.” At one point, the foundation brought in a PR consultant to try and clarify the messaging, but Armstrong himself says there's only so much they can do. “We can't control what everybody says they're wearing the bracelets for,” he told me.

At the same time, though, Armstrong and his supporters help perpetuate the notion that they are, in fact, helping battle cancer in the lab. “I am here to fight this disease,” he angrily told journalist Paul Kimmage at a press conference held during his 2009 comeback. In 2010, the foundation agreed to let an Australian hospital call its new research facility the Livestrong Cancer Research Center. And when I recently visited my local RadioShack, a major Armstrong sponsor, the clerk asked, “Would you like to make a donation to the Livestrong foundation to help support cancer research?”

No wonder people get confused.

 

With its reclaimed-wood surfaces and industrial-chic design, Livestrong HQ resembles a cutting-edge Whole Foods—another signature Austin institution. Here in East Austin, the poorer side of town, there's no Whole Foods, just dusty
carnicerías
that sell fantastic tongue tacos. A renovated warehouse, the $9 million building opened in 2009.

In the lobby, I meet Livestrong spokeswoman Katherine McLane and Chris Dammert, head of what's known as navigation services. Our first stop is the building's walk-in navigation center, adjacent to the main entrance, where bilingual staffers offer cancer patients financial consultation, help with insurance issues, and counseling. Since the center opened in late 2010, Dammert says, some 207 families have come in—lower traffic than he'd like. “We're hoping to build awareness over time,” he says.

The walk-in center is a hands-on version of the online and telephone support services that Livestrong has offered since 2005. Dammert leads me upstairs to an area where two “navigators” are settling into their cubicles. This is where patients or loved ones can phone in to a hotline with questions. Depending on their needs, callers are either directed to one of two in-house social workers for emotional support or referred to outside agencies.

Livestrong sends about two-thirds of the callers to organizations like the Virginia-based Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF), which deals with insurance and billing issues. In 2010, Livestrong paid PAF $727,000 for helping its clients; the organization even has a staffer on-site in Austin. In addition, Livestrong helps connect people with clinical trials and offers assistance to patients who (like Lance did) need help learning about sperm banking or egg freezing. Last year, the foundation says, it saved its members more than $2 million on fertility services.

Lastly, Livestrong publishes a set of cancer guidebooks, which include a journal, a record keeper to help organize paperwork, and a manual walking readers through the many steps of treatment. These are available from the Livestrong website for free.

One unlikely “nav” beneficiary is cycling journalist Charles Pelkey, diagnosed last summer with male breast cancer. Pelkey has been a critic of Armstrong—“I don't particularly like the man,” he says—but after he tweeted about his cancer, a Livestrong navigator contacted him to offer assistance. “There are really wonderful people who work there,” Pelkey says. “I respect everything they do.”

Dammert hands me off to McLane for the rest of the tour, and it's clear Armstrong didn't hire a milquetoast for the job. Tall and serious, she came to the foundation in 2007 from the Bush Department of Education. “My job was to defend the No Child Left Behind law,” she says. “Every teacher in America hated it, including my parents.”

Armstrong is a visitor, not a daily presence; when I was there in June, he had already decamped to Aspen for the summer. But his handprints are all over the place, from the framed yellow jerseys outside the staff gym to the enormous yellow chopper (a gift from the guys on
Orange County Choppers
) parked near the lobby. Every available surface is occupied by pieces from Armstrong's art collection—including the Shepard Fairey “Lance face” poster and a wooden carving of a female torso emerging from a globe.